Discipline: Music Composition

Jan Swafford

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: Medford, MA
MacDowell Fellowships: 1978, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1984
More: www.janswafford.com
Jan Swafford is an American composer and author. He earned his B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard College and his M.M.A. and D.M.A. from the Yale School of Music. His teachers included Earl Kim at Harvard, Jacob Druckman at Yale, and Betsy Jolas at Tanglewood. He has written respected musical biographies of Charles Ives, Johannes Brahms, and Ludwig van Beethoven, as well as the introductory Vintage Guide to Classical Music. His writing honors include a 2012 Deems Taylor Award for internet writing and a Mellon Fellowship at Harvard. His Brahms and Ives biographies were end-of-year Critics' Choices in The New York Times. The Ives biography was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award in biography and won the Pen-Winship prize for a book on a New England subject. His biography Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph in its first week appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. He has taught at schools including Boston University, Amherst College, Tufts, and Boston Conservatory.

Studios

Van Zorn (formerly Kirby)

Jan Swafford worked in the Van Zorn (formerly Kirby) studio.

Constructed thanks to a bequest from Sarah L. Kirby, Kirby Studio was the last new building to be erected during Mrs. MacDowell’s leadership (1907-1951). The load-bearing masonry walls were laid by local mason Augustus Beaulieu atop a fieldstone foundation. A 1995 renovation preserved the brick fireplace with wooden mantel and…

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